Other clients also include the NFL, Sweaty Betty, Panasonic and Liberty.

We caught up with Threepipe’s co-founder and director Jim Hawker – a man who’s made PR Week’s Powerbook of the most influential people working in communications for five years running.

Threepipe co-founder and director Jim Hawker

He was also responsible for the decision to acquire an SEO agency in 2016, putting the firm ahead of the curve.

Where does the name Threepipe come from?

It came from Sherlock Holmes.

If he was given a complex problem he would call it a three pipe problem and sit there smoking three pipes while he thought about it.

So it reflects our consultative approach, we think a lot about the problems and challenges that can occur.

A large amount of your focus is on changing algorithms and how to overcome them, why?

Platforms like Facebook are trying to make more money so they’re making it harder for brands to reach their audiences by changing algorithms, basically to make firms spend more money to reach those audiences.

But actually the upside is that it’s hugely targeted in terms of actually distributing brand content.

The algorithms change all the time whether it’s on Instagram, Facebook, Google or Twitter and essentially brands really need to understand how they are changing because it’s affecting their ability to reach their audience.

There’s two ways you do that. One is you create brilliant content that becomes more shareable or you spend more money having a much more targeted approach at distributing content.

What has been your favourite project to work on to date?

We just finished a really great campaign for the England Women’s Cricket Team.

They won the Women’s World Cup last year and we ran a campaign to create more awareness around the women’s team and to reach more families.

It’s a really nice campaign, it’s really integrated, lots of outdoor advertising, lots of social media and lots of great PR.

It was really successful.

What are the digital trends we’re seeing at the moment?

We’re doing a lot of voice search so things like voice ordering on Google Home and Apple Homepod coming into your house.

A lot of brands are trying to figure out how they can work with those devices so we’re helping a few companies do that at the moment.

It’s an exciting new channel that didn’t really exist five years ago, but they reckon it will be in 40% of UK households by the end of this year so that’s quite cool.

SEO is really booming.

A lot of people are now accessing websites on mobile devices but a lot of brands have created websites that aren’t responsive to mobile or tablet.

So Google is starting to penalise those companies that aren’t creating online destinations fit for mobile so we’re helping a lot of companies create presences that are mobile optimised.

It’s a big area because when Google says do something, you’ve got no choice really.

Threepipe's offices in Republic, Poplar Credit: The Wharf

The other area we’re focusing more on is Amazon because over 50% of all product searches now start there, not on Google.

Amazon is now starting to open up its platform for more advertising so brands have now got more opportunity to drive campaigns so we’re helping them do that a lot more.

As an independent company, do you find it hard to compete with the bigger agencies?

It’s actually a really good place to be at the moment because the big holding companies are really struggling.

I think it’s mainly because they use lots of different agencies and are trying to merge them all together.

But we can go across different channels so we can work on SEO, we can work on paid-for social, without having to do it through lots of different agencies.

So actually talent is coming to us because we are an independent agency, rather than one of those big agencies who work together but don’t like each other.

So it’s actually a strength for us at the moment.

We can be more nimble and agile unlike those bigger companies that are actually being quite slow to adapt to some of the changes that are going on.

What’s next for Threepipe?

We’re investing a lot in our own technology so we’ve now got two developers creating lots of tools for us, which is quite an exciting thing.

We are developing our own attribution platform, which allows clients to better understand the value of their digital spend.

With so many more digital channels available to brands it is difficult to know what is working and what isn’t.

Our model allows them to understand which digital channels are working best to drive sales.